


Home

by Ginipig



Series: Cullistair One-Shots [4]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Awkwardness, Cullen romance battlement scene, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Miscommunication
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:09:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22298353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ginipig/pseuds/Ginipig
Summary: To Alistair, Cullen feels like home. So he asks Cullen to take a walk with him — on the battlements.
Relationships: Alistair/Cullen Rutherford, cullistair - Relationship
Series: Cullistair One-Shots [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1604995
Comments: 8
Kudos: 36





	Home

**Author's Note:**

> While trying to think of various kisses and sweet moments Cullistair could share, I realized that I've never seen the infamous battlement scene with them. So here it is.

Alistair walked along the battlements with Cullen in complete silence.

That wasn’t to say that silence was bad, necessarily. Sure, Alistair had never cared for it much, but many people did, and Cullen was one of them.

They’d spent enough time together lately — lunches, dinners, walks, strategy discussions (yes, they did do _some_ work), sparring sessions — that Alistair could tell when Cullen needed time to think. To be honest, he actually liked that Cullen was comfortable enough around him to not feel the need to make the small talk he was so terrible at; even more, he liked that he, who had always felt trapped by silence, felt comfortable just being with Cullen. No talking required.

But right now, walking along the battlements — this was not the good type of silence.

No. This was the thick, tense, confusing, so-quiet-it’s-loud silence that Alistair had always hated.

Worst of all, it was uncomfortable. And if anything could describe his relationship with Cullen, it was _comfortable_. With Cullen, he cracked jokes because he wanted to hear Cullen laugh, not because it was the only way to get attention, or because humor was the only thing he was good at. With Cullen, he talked not because he needed to fill the empty silence, but because he wanted to talk, and, more importantly, because Cullen was interested in what he had to say.

With Cullen, everything felt _right_.

Alistair had never had a real home before; he’d lived in many places, but none of them had felt like somewhere he could stay.

Cullen felt like home, and Alistair liked the idea of being with him forever.

The walk had been Alistair’s suggestion, as it always was at this time in the afternoon. Every day Cullen became so absorbed in his work that he would lose track of time, and Alistair wanted to make sure he wasn’t pushing himself too hard. That was what usually triggered his withdrawal episodes.

Usually, they each talked about the way their day had gone so far. But not today.

Because Alistair had been thinking too much lately, and this was an example of what happened when he did.

He ruined everything.

Last night he’d had a thought — a completely out-of-nowhere, idle thought — about how nice it might be to kiss Cullen. So nice. So very, very nice.

And then everything clicked into place, and he’d realized that over the past month he’d been falling in love with Cullen like the total _idiot_ he was. A complete and utter fool.

Cullen was … well, Cullen. He could have any person he wanted — Maker knew most of Orlais and probably half of Ferelden were swooning over him — but he was busier than a Warden during a Blight and, as far as Alistair could tell, had no time for anything besides work, half-hearted eating when he remembered, and the few hours he managed to sleep.

Well, and their daily afternoon walk, but Alistair could annoy anyone into doing anything.

“Are you all right?” Cullen asked, dragging Alistair from his thoughts.

“Me? Of course! I’m feeling great! Why wouldn’t I be?”

Cullen raised an eyebrow. “For one, that was a terrible attempt at reassurance. For two, you’ve barely said a word since we left my office. And if I know anything about you, it’s that when you stop talking —”

“Everyone rejoices in the Maker-blessed silence?”

Alistair had expected a mild glare. Instead, Cullen tilted his head, his expression sympathetic. “When you stop talking, you have something important on your mind.” Then, as if someone had flipped a switch, Cullen started to rub the back of his neck. “I’d be honored if you would confide in me, but if you aren’t comfortable —”

“No!” Alistair insisted. “That’s not it at all.”

“Then what?” Cullen stopped and lay a gentle hand on his arm and said, “Tell me what’s wrong, Alistair. Please?”

Alistair swallowed as those lovely amber eyes bore into his. Then he dropped his gaze to the point where Cullen’s hand lay on his arm. Cullen’s gaze followed, and he jerked his hand away to once again rub the back of his neck as he resumed their walk.

“It’s a … nice day.”

Maker, Cullen _despised_ small talk, hated it above all else except, perhaps, Corypheus. Alistair really had bungled things.

Which was the absolute last thing he wanted. Even if all he could have of Cullen was friendship, he would accept it because he cared about him and didn’t want to lose Cullen’s presence in his life. He needed to fix it.

“I care for you,” he blurted instead.

At that, Cullen froze. And because Alistair’s big fat mouth sometimes operated on its own, he continued. But he was also a coward, so he spoke to Cullen’s chest plate.

“A — a great deal.” He tried to grin, but with his luck he probably just looked constipated. “And I want more with you than … well.” He waved his hand back and forth between them. “More than this.”

Cullen sighed, and when Alistair looked up, his face was carefully blank as he turned away and began walking again. “I can’t say I haven’t wondered what I might say to you in this sort of situation.”

Alistair’s heart stopped. “In — what?”

“You’ve never been any good at Wicked Grace.” Cullen’s honey eyes, when he regarded Alistair, were kind, as was his soft smile, and Alistair braced himself for the worst. “I — I know.”

Those words were a shield bash to the head — he felt stunned, dizzy, and like he might vomit any moment.

“Oh,” was all he could manage. “I should go.”

“No!” Cullen almost shouted, reaching out to Alistair before stopping himself and defaulting to the neck rub. “I mean,” he corrected, more quiet now. “That is — I — I _have_ wondered what I might say. And this …” He seemed to struggle getting the words out. “… isn’t … it.”

Alistair stood rooted in place, unable to move if he wanted to, while Cullen searched for what to say.

“You’re a Warden. We’re at war. Maker knows if we’ll both make it to the end alive, and even if we do, neither of us have long lives awaiting us after.”

At that, Alistair’s heart began to crack. Cullen was right, of course; between the Taint and the lyrium, the best they could hope for was that Cullen started to lose his mind around the time Alistair left for his Calling.

“And you …” Cullen’s voice softened as he stepped closer — too soft, too close, too intimate. “I didn’t think it was possible.”

Maybe — maybe it wasn’t too late. Heart pounding so fast he thought it might burst, Alistair smirked. “Good thing we’re both experienced at making the impossible look easy.”

“So we are.” Cullen’s smile was sweet as he leaned in, and Alistair stopped breathing altogether. “It seems too much to ask. But I want to —”

“Commander!” A voice called, and they both froze. Cullen raised his eyes to the Maker, and Alistair felt his body tense. “You wanted a copy of Sister Leliana’s report.”

Cullen executed an impressive military pivot, and Alistair shivered at the glare he leveled at the poor messenger.

“What?” Cullen spat the word through gritted teeth.

“Sister Leliana’s report? You wanted it delivered ‘without delay.’” Only then did the messenger raise his gaze to his furious commander and begin to take several slow, deliberate steps back. “Or … to your office …”

But Alistair knew Leliana. She always had her reports delivered at the beginning of the day, never in the afternoon, since the war council didn’t meet until the next morning and she wanted topics fresh in their minds. (When he’d told her he thought that was unnecessarily manipulative, she’d just smiled in that scary calm way of hers that made him want to scamper from the room.)

If this was a report from her, it was an odd one.

“Wait,” he called after the messenger, taking a step in his direction and (unfortunately) away from Cullen. “I’d like to read that report.”

The messenger, who looked ready to wet himself, flicked his eyes to Cullen. “It’s … um … it’s for the Commander.”

Without blinking or even moving anything except his arm, Cullen reached out for the report wordlessly, murder still in his eyes.

The messenger approached Cullen as one would a sleeping — or perhaps a grumpy, just-awakened — dragon. Just as Cullen closed his fingers around the suspiciously thin report, the messenger dropped it like burning tinder and bolted in the opposite direction.

“I bet Lels planted that rep —”

But the moment the messenger turned his back, Cullen tossed the report over his shoulder, grabbed Alistair’s face with both hands, and shoved him into the rampart with the force of his kiss.

Alistair let out a rather indecent moan and pulled Cullen so close that he was literally between a rock and a hard place. His knees wobbled, but Cullen held him up, cradling his face as though it were the only remaining griffon egg. They clutched each other desperately, and Cullen tasted like when the mabari snuggled against him in the barn, the time he first tried cheese, and the day Duncan conscripted him all rolled into one.

He tasted like home.

When they finally, reluctantly parted, Cullen’s lovely eyes were softer than Alistair had ever seen them.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “That was … um … really nice.”

Alistair grinned so hard his cheeks ached. “Was it? I think I need more testing to be sure.”

When he leaned in, Cullen met him halfway, and they dove back into each other, kissing until Alistair’s vision darkened around the edges. If he hadn’t required air to stay conscious and feel Cullen’s … _everything_ surrounding him, he would have foregone breathing altogether.

“What about now?” Cullen asked after they’d parted again.

“Definitely nice. Just like the day.”

Cullen shook his head, chuckling. “Shut up.”

With enough room to finally step away from the ramparts digging into his back, Alistair bent to pick up the report Cullen so casually and romantically discarded. It consisted of only two pieces of parchment. The top one read: _FOR COMMANDER CULLEN’S EYES ONLY_

“Why is this report so important to you?” Cullen asked, reading the second page over his shoulder. It read, simply:

> _It’s about time.  
>  _ _-L_

"I knew it!" Alistair let out a growl of frustration at his nosy, know-it-all, stabby old friend, crumpling the page in his clenched fist. “When I see her, I’m going to —”

But Cullen took the parchment from him, threw it over the side of the battlement, and pulled Alistair in for yet another kiss.

Since Alistair couldn’t imagine any other place he’d rather be, he relaxed into the embrace and let Cullen take him home.


End file.
